The Brave New Pioneers
Farmers quit Zimbabwe to be pioneers once more
Tim Butcher reports from Chimoio on ousted whites' new start in Mozambique

2^nd November 2002

DRIVEN OFF their land in Zimbabwe, scores of white farmers are trekking into neighbouring Mozambique to carve out new lives in a country recovering from years of civil war and appalling floods.

The pioneering excitement felt by the new arrivals is soon tempered by the tough conditions where everything has to be built from scratch.

Forced to spend months in tents on remote plots of land, the farmers are being struck down by more virulent strains of malaria than they are used to back home in Zimbabwe.

Unable to borrow money from banks to pay their start-up costs, the farmers mostly work as "share croppers" for large agricultural companies, signing 10-year contracts with little chance of any financial profit.

But despite the hardships the mood was upbeat at the London Pub in Chimoio, the town that forms the hub for the nascent white Zimbabwean farming community of Mozambique.

Over plentiful supplies of the local bottled beer and under a large mural of the Union flag, the talk was more of the opportunity offered by Mozambique rather than what had been lost in Zimbabwe.

"The writing has been on the wall back home for a number of years so it was time to plan for a new life somewhere else," said Brendon Evans, whose 20 head of diary cattle now produce the only fresh milk in the north of Mozambique.

"It is difficult without the banks and the infrastructure but here in Mozambique you have a stable currency and the rule of law, things we lost in Zimbabwe. The hope of making a tiny amount of a stable currency is better than the chaos at home."

It is that hope that has already brought 60 white farmers to Chimoio, with dozens more applying to join them. New faces are constantly turning up at the London Pub and during the day the town's main street is full of white Zimbabweans doing business at newly opened supply shops.

Down a long track and across a muddy riverbed, things were more austere on the new farm set up by Dawid Lombard, 37, and other farmers as a syndicate working for one of the big tobacco multinationals.

For months their home has been two caravans and a tent under a wild fig tree as they struggled to prepare 250 acres of tobacco fields, seed beds and drying barns.

"So far the Mozambican authorities have been helpful and forthcoming but our biggest problem is lack of capital as we have no collateral to offer banks if we try to take out a loan," said Mr Lombard.

Stopped by the Zimbabwean authorities from taking tractors, irrigation pipes or any other equipment from their homes, the men have had to beg and borrow all the necessary supplies.

Under Mozambican law agricultural land cannot be purchased freehold but it is being offered on 50-year leases to the Zimbabwean farmers who only have to pay a survey fee of a few hundred pounds each year.

The Mozambican authorities have so far welcomed the white farmers if only because they offer employment and agricultural skills training in a country where 70 per cent of people remain below the poverty line.

But there is a fear that if the farmers are too successful, President Joaquim Chissano will come under pressure from Zimbabwe. President Robert Mugabe has blamed most of his country's ills on white farmers and Mr Chissano will be sensitive about accusations of kowtowing to the whites.

Jose Graca, local agriculture director, declined an interview with The Daily Telegraph amid evidence that Mozambique wants to play down its relationship with the white Zimbabweans.

Such considerations have stopped Britain and the Commonwealth from providing any money for resettlement.

However, the World Bank has expressed an interest, and for people like Mr Lombard financial backing cannot come soon enough.

Tim Butcher - The Daily Telegraph (UK)